Monday, August 13, 2007

Temple of Bel

My machine has had to go to the repair shop and won't be back for another 3 weeks- groan, just when I have had all this work percolating and I wanted to make a big fire quilt incorporating the ideas of the small prototype piece.

So what to do.... there is plenty of things to do, but mood and weather and inclination are another matter especially when I was planning on doing something else.So I trawled through some of the photos I took in Syria and in particular some of the motifs and patterns on marble that i found lying strewn around in the grounds of the Temple of Bel in Palmyra. I had tried painting them a couple of weeks ago- but I had left the papers in the shed, which will no longer be my studio, and condensation had dripped on the papers and made drip lines. I mucked around a little in photoshop and decided to print the motif which I had doctored a little on a sheet of paperbacked print ready silk I found the other day(it was somewhere in the place called my work room which is half in the shed and half all over the place). I was rather pleased with how the print turned out- quite desne and rich . So then I started layering ( Syria is so much about layers of history and script and impressions) and then stitching- using some cross stitch and straight stitch.It will all be hand stitched as I don't like free machining on my other machine. I want to do some more of these pieces incorporating other patterns I found there and maybe call them Picnic Blankets for Zenobia.As Zenobia was said to be learned and gifted in languages I thought I might make a Diary of Zenobia ( in book form ) to go with the Picnic Blankets- I can see her reclining on the blankets writing her history. When I was in Perth I purcahed Alisa Golden's Expressive Handmade Books book- plenty of ideas there for coming up with an original book.

2 comments:

This is stunning. The fabric was dyed folded and clamped (itajime zome0)? The coilor is remiscent of papyrus. The print is beautiful. Today I am weaving tapestry. I enjoy so much watching your work grow.

Lovely designs and I'm sure Zenobia would enjoy resting on such blankets.

There has been a lot of recent work on actual Palmyran textiles and designs. There's a book out by the excavator Andreas Schmidt-Colinet (only in German, I'm afraid, but the pictures are great), Palmyra, Kulturbegegnung im Grenzbereich. Some inspiring stuff!

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ABOUT ME

I am a Textile Artist and itinerant at the moment. My base at present is in Gellibrand though I teach around the world. I love to dye and print fabrics and assemble them into quilts with lots of stitching both by hand and machine. I also create my own linocuts for printing on fabric.